Jagex, the British developers of veteran fantasy MMO RuneScape, have announced their acquisition by a potentially surprising new owner: the private equity firm best-known for owning major sports brands including Six Nations Rugby, Spanish football league LaLiga, French football governing body Ligue de Football and the Women’s Tennis Association. The deal was reportedly closed for almost a billion pounds.
]]>A few weeks ago, I talked about a number of new features coming to RPS in 2023, and here we are with our very first edition of Ask RPS! This is a new mailbag feature where RPS supporters get to pose questions to the RPS Treehouse team (mostly video games-related, though not necessarily always), and we then answer those questions in public posts for everyone to get involved with. Easy peasy.
To kick us off, our first question comes courtesy of Old_Man_Gaming, who asked: "What was the first game that really grabbed you and dominated your life?"
Come and find out which games had us trapped in the throes of childhood mania below, and why not tell us about your own gaming obsessions in the comments? You might just find a surprise kindred spirit.
]]>Last time, you decided that nude mods are better than going into meats and guts. Oh sure, you're brave with your votes, but not one single commenter was brave enough to address the subject of honking their pud. Cowards. If you won't expand, we have to move on. This week, I pose a question of squeaky critters versus a squeaky coat. What's better: a level 1 rat, or Alone In The Dark's jacket inventory?
]]>If you're looking for an entire second life, we're here to judge. We're only here to serve, which is why we've curated a list of the best MMOs and MMORPGs on PC right now. There's many a massively multiplayer experience to find out there these days, running the gamut from fantasy to sci-fi and... well mostly those two things, but you can still build a little you and live in a whole new world, make virtual friends to share your life with, engage in huge battles against massive enemies, and spend your evenings on raids to grind out levels. Some of the games on this list are tried and true classics that have stuck around for the long haul, and some are newer entries, but all offer deep worlds that you can disappear into.
]]>Jagex have released Old School RuneScape on Steam, with cross-platform progression and an event to celebrate the game's eighth anniversary. Seeing all this news about it has absolutely blasted me with nostalgia. The free-to-play fantasy MMORPG is an old version of RuneScape from 2007 that was re-released as Old School RuneScape in 2013. It's been available to download and play online for ages, but I don't think I've thought about it since I was a wee babe in school. Lumbridge! The Grand Exchange! Not knowing what to do and just fighting goblins in a forest! Oh no, I think I'm about to download it on Steam.
]]>Old School RuneScape, the nostalgic MMORPG spin-off, is coming to Steam on February 24th. Is it fair to call a game that's continuing to grow and expand nostalgic? Probably not.
]]>Jagex, UK-based developer of massively multiplayer game RuneScape, have been bought by private equity firm The Carlyle Group. The sale was reported late last week by The Telegraph, and the Carlyle Group confirmed the deal yesterday, stating that they intended to speed up the studio's content creation and launch new games, according to GI.biz.
Now the sale is being disputed in a lawsuit by another private equity firm, Plutos Sama Holdings.
]]>On this day in history, January 4th, 2001, RuneScape was born. Yes, yes, starting off 2021 feeling old now, aren't we? The developers at Jagex have a big old bash planned to mark the game's 20th birthday with an entire year of celebration, questing, and nostalgia. If you were trotting around Gielinor in your browser of choice all the way back at the beginning of the millenium, you may barely recognise the world this celebration takes place in.
]]>Say what you want about modern games, but they've gotten pretty good at rendering fauna. If Red Dead Redemption 2 wants to show you a goose, it'll damn well show you a goose. Last month, a new Twitter account popped up to remind us that this is a fairly recent development, cataloguing the smart, strange, and downright cursed wildlife created in the name of saving a few dozen polygons.
]]>Runescape’s newest update, Archaeology, adds a whole new skill to the almost two-decade-old MMO, but there’s some necessary context for what it brings to the table - at least historically speaking. At only 10 years old, I was as industrious as they came, and actually set up my own in-game business. I had people - probably much older than I was - chopping wood for me, which I then sold for profit or used to increase my Firemaking skill, like a proper little capitalist. All I had to give them in return were axes worth a measly fraction of my wealth.
Runescape was a simpler game in those times, where ordinary skills could be paired with one another to create basic but effective economic structures, most of which were founded upon the exploitation of fresh-out-of-Lummy naivete. But that was 14 years ago. Runescape is a different beast now, and the addition of Archaeology is unprecedented in more ways than one. “Skilling is not traditionally a vehicle for storytelling,” lead designer Dave Osborne tells me in an interview conducted over Zoom. “This completely upends that expectation.”
]]>As reported by PennLive, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has affirmed the district court's decision that a Pennsylvania man was not discriminated against by being "muted" in an online game.
]]>I started playing RuneScape in April 2006. After weeks of listening to my friends talk about the MMO, I’d finally given in and made an account. Logging in for the first time, I wondered whether it would be as good as they promised. This worry was soon forgotten when I found myself swept away in an exciting wave of sheep-shearing and goblin-fighting. I was hooked. My evenings became consumed with adventuring, hunting down dangerous beasts and crafting bowstrings. I visited the world of Gielinor nearly every day for over five years. By the end of 2011, however, these visits were becoming shorter, until one day I stopped playing completely, prioritising studying instead. But I always planned on returning one day, just to see how RuneScape had developed, and that day came in 2018.
]]>It feels like the end of an era when a game as venerable as this shuts down, even if it is just a particularly dusty old legacy incarnation exclusive to long-time subscribers to the game. Browser-based MMORPG RuneScape has been chugging along since 2001, offering exploration, questing and eternal grind to practically anyone with an internet connection.
While RuneScape itself has evolved into something far more contemporary in appearance, the Classic version - a living archive of the original 2001 release - has remained largely untouched, just slowly gathering largely-unfixable bug reports. Jagex reckon the time has come to put the old warhorse out to pasture, and will shut down the servers on August 6th.
]]>It's a simple theme this week with the Electronic Wireless Show. We're talking about guilty pleasures - the games that make us feel a wee bit embarrassed but not so much that we won't squirrel away at them while grinning like idiots. Alec feels a bit sheepish bringing his toy steering wheel to work when planning to play American Truck Simulator. Meanwhile, Matt remembers how he enjoyed the passage of time while picking flax in a Runescape field, and Brendan attempts to explain the relaxing sea-based boredom of Sailaway.
We've also been tinkering with alchemical puzzler Opus Magnum from Zachtronics, fiddling with small machines to produce precious metals, hangover cures and the kinds of "stamina potions" you might find spamming up your junk folder. Come listen, guilt-free.
]]>RuneScape [official site] remains one of the most enduringly popular MMORPGs around, but the finals of its most recent PvP tournament ended with the winner and several others disqualified, accusations of staff favouritism, allegations of targeted DDoS attacks, and a $20,000 prize pot with nobody to go to.
In short, it all went a bit Wacky Races.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Runescape [official site] is a bizarre thing because it's one of the few MMORPGs that seems to be improving with age. Where most slowly fade and die out, Runescape is only growing prettier and more intricate. Oh yeah, then there's that bit about it surpassing 250 million registered accounts since launching — god help us if those players ever decide to form their own nation. But Runescape's continued growth feels like a counterpoint to the way many MMOs seem to always be slowly circling the drain.
]]>RuneScape [official site] players will soon be able to buy the possessions of banned players by bidding on them in Storage Wars-style blind auctions. Players will bid on a banned character's possessions as a job lot, a sealed box containing... who knows what? It could be treasure or trash. Maybe Bank Bidders will be be a raffle rather than a police auction; they're not sure yet. Point is, this is the strangest bit of virtual justice I've heard of since, er, well, Cobbo's article on MMO prisons earlier today.
]]>Ten years ago to this very date, the world of Runescape [official site] was devastated by an event so malicious, so evil, that of course it could have only happened on the six day of the six month of the six year of this millennium. I'm talking about the dreaded Falador Massacre—where thousands of Runescapians lost their lives and their items in the span of just a few hours. Today, Jagex are celebrating the ten year anniversary of that awful day by opening two special servers for subscribers, World 666 and World 111, where players can relive those awful events again and again and again.
]]>Free-to-play MMORPG RuneScape [official site] is still ticking away after fifteen years, with developers Jagex actively updating it. The latest was a pretty big one, bringing a new game client and engine named NXT which finally takes the game away from Java and makes it look a fair bit prettier - while running faster than the previous version. For starters, the game is no longer choked in distance fog like Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Seriously, look at this before/after comparison, it's wild:
]]>Oh, Runescape. It seems like just yesterday someone lured me into your wilderness, stabbed me in the back, and took all my stuff. [Looks at calendar] Aaaaand damn it. It's been over a decade.
But don't get all "Dust in the Wind" on me yet. To celebrate the game's fifteenth anniversary, Old-School Runescape (a.k.a. 2007scape) [official site] is getting a brand new continent, and the first part is out now.
]]>Runescape's July update will add raiding to the browser-based MMO. Also curiously giggly cats and elite slayer creatures.
As a non-Runescape [official site] player I think I'd assumed that either raiding existed already or, if it didn't, that it probably wasn't compatible with how the game worked so I stand corrected on all fronts.
]]>Jagex, the company behind RuneScape, has announced HearthScape! Actually, that's a lie. They've announced Chronicle: RuneScape Legends! It's a collectible card game based on the RuneScape universe so you can see the possible influence of Blizzard's recent Warcraft-based hit, Hearthstone, though.
The developers explain that the game will be "played out within the pages of a living book" and will feature such things as quest-building, letting you craft your own RPGs against enemies from the RuneScapeiverse and, of course, PvP.
]]>Jagex send word that their third iteration of the enormously popular fantasy MMO - Runescape 3 - has materialised on this internet, right here. The game is kicking off with a ten-week event, in which the players must battle for "Lumbridge". That might not sound very glamorous, but it gives players the chance to work together in PvP activities, with the ultimate goal of being champion of the event, and actually changing stuff in the world. Jagex explain: "You'll be able to join one of the two factions, and to collect divine tears - fragments of condensed, Guthixian energy that can be gathered through combat and skilling, both on the battlefield and off." Unpronounceable energies are the best kind.
Lovely trailer below.
]]>"Runescape, eh?" I say, to the cold silence of the RPS virtual office. No one is listening. And, well, cards on the table: none of us have ever played Runescape. Adam was living in the jungle at the time, Alec was trapped inside a Micro-ATX case in a cupboard at Future Publishing, and I hadn't yet taken material form out of my constituent angry ghosts from a haunted house in Kent. No, we do not know the ways of Runescape. Which makes writing a pithy intro about the arrival of the third game a little tricky. How am I doing? Ok then. What I do know is that it's being in delivered in HTML5, meaning it can actually be pretty impressive in a browser, and that it's happening on the 22nd. These things, and more, are discussed in the dating trailer, which you can see below.
]]>I never actually played much Runescape. Growing up, I was a snobby, Everquest-obsessed so-and-so. "Look at all these graphics," I'd say. "My Iksar warrior is made up of so many polygons that you practically can't count them but still kinda can." I did have a few friends who swore by the lo-fi MMO, though, and it's not hard to see why. Back then, free, easily runnable portals to lands beyond our wildest imaginations were hard to come by. Runescape, then, holds a very special place in many hearts, and for that reason it will never dieeeee. And so, we arrive at Runescape 3. Yes, there was a Runescape 2. Find out what warrants the curvy, alluringly sensual new digit after the break.
]]>A shame SOE didn't do this for Star Wars: Galaxies, or it might still be with us now. Following enthusiastic voting from some 440,000 paying RuneScape players, Jagex have resurrected the apparently beloved 2007 version of their long-running, secretly enormous MMORPG, to run alongside the flashier current version. It's being pitched not as a roll back but a favour to the faithful, who will also play a part in deciding what gets updated in the old client.
]]>Quietly one of the most popular games on the net, RuneScape is not exactly short of players. It has, for the longest time, however, been short of a way to provide those players with the same kind of community-building infrastructure as other popular online games. The latest update fixes that, and it's proving popular, as Jagex report: "In just 24 hours more than 250,000 RuneScape players have formed clans, including over 370 clans containing 50 members or more. The update gives RuneScape clans a real presence in the game and included a host of new features including individual clan camps, chat channels, clan customisations, clan websites and new in-game content; Rated Clan Wars."
]]>I suspect Jagex are off your radar. They were off mine. While I was more than aware of their enormous success with the free MMO Runescape, I never quite filed it as something directly relevant to my interests in PC Games. A chance meeting with their recent brilliant arcade football game Kickabout League made me reconsider, so I grasped the chance to hook up at Develop with their CEO Mark Gehard, the Head of their new not-revealed MMO Mechscape Henrique Olifiers and PR Manager Adam Tuckwell. I come away with the impression of a proud, ambitious and iconoclastic company with a lot of big ideas. An MMO which looks at Master of Orion rather than Ultima as its inspiration? Picking up where Sensible Software left of? Real Men Programmers Do It In 64Mb? PC as pure populism, and taking that seriously? And not playing the hype game at all? It's time Jagex got on your radar. You start here...
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